Here is a message I received from a girl I know - A very silly prayer

Just to give a brief summary , the girl writing to me is madly in love with me and still doesn't quite get the hint that I get very tired and turned off by such messages as below.

"You still make me sing better. On Sunday I sang Mendelssohn's "Hear My Prayer." The sermon was about asking God for what you need. There was a prayer right before my solo and I asked God to help me sing it well. Suddenly vivid memories of you flooded my mind. As I stood up to sing I thought, "Well darn, I spent that whole time thinking about Dustin and not preparing for my solo!" But when the organ started playing I realized that the emotions I had recalled were perfect for the song. If you want to know how I did you can read the comment that my organist, Jonathan, left on my wall. "

I hope you're doing well.

For you,~Laura

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Then my reply follows:

"Being the skeptic I am , my first thought is 'Don't you think God has better things to do than help you sing a piece well?' ... global hunger , natural disasters , plagues , etc. "

(I just think it's very funny how she is literally praying to an imaginary deity as if this deity cares at the moment whether or not she sings a song well with everything else this deity most likely needs to do ... )

She adamantly denies being indoctrinated. I also think the more atheistic I prove myself to be the more her love deepens for me in some sick and twisted way because she still feels 'sorry for me' and needs to help me find Jesus Christ.

I haven't posted here in a while but this message made me laugh and sickened me all in the same moment. Just needed to vent.

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

This is a nice little quote I found from Mother Theresa. She obviously likes you, even though her devotion for imaginary things and your lack of such devotion kind of makes you wonder what strange things human beings can be sometimes and how many things we still have to learn about ourselves before we can actually make some sense out of all this mess. Anyway, I would suggest you deal with this in a more serious manner, because you can still save what is left of that pathetic little groupie of Jesus, god(s) and all that is holy, if you actually care about doing such a thing for another human being or if you care about her in any way. If not, well, sit back and enjoy whatever else might come in your direction from her or any other person like her.

And, in the end, you, or at least thinking about you - and not some god, made her sing and obviously feel better. You should use that if you plan on doing something about her godliness. Either way, good luck!

She wants to "save" you. She is probably a type C personality--the martyr type. I guess the bottom line is how you feel about her. If you actually sent that reply (and others like it in the past), then I guess she knows how you feel (and think). If you like her enough to pursue a relationship, you need to let her know that your atheism isn't just a symptom of having been "hurt". That is what many religious people think it is and obviously what she thinks. If you don't want to pursue this, then simply tell her that it couldn't work out because of religious differences. Either way, she needs to understand that your stance is based on logic and not emotion.

exactly she does want to save me. That is why I could never gain any intimacy with her because I have this idea that one of the main reasons she does love me is that it's a sympathetic 'I feel sorry for you and want to help you' kind of love. Like when you find a squirrel on the side of the road that was just struck by a car but still squirming around and relatively ok. You immediately go 'awwwwww that's so sad I want to help that poor little thing!'

Also , her religious understanding is very very shallow. She hasn't read any of the bible and yet she tells me she doesn't need to because she 'feels Jesus' every Sunday and trusts God loves her.

Also she hasn't followed any of my previous directions to read certain books from Bart Ehrman or watch scholarly debates on the bible's textual criticism.

I think a lot and I mean a lot of christians have never read the bible or at least not the whole bible. Its crazy to say that you live your life based on a book that you know nothing about. Once people read the bible with an open mind and learn the history of it, it actually turns them away from it.
Good luck with the girl.

Religious people don't base their faith on reason, so they project the same logic on others: they think atheists also do not base their atheism on reason. They think if only we could feel how wonderful having faith is, we'd stop asking questions, too, and joined them in their illusory 'just knowing'.

It is exhausting having a relationship with theists. I cut mine in the very beginning because it turned out I couldn't joke about religion. ))) So I went ahead and explained how evil I thought religious indoctrination was, how violent and cruel Christian god appeared and that I would never tolerate my kids being taken to church on Sundays. That totally cleared out my point and we split.

LoL , she would hook up with me anywhere. In her church , in University musical practice rooms. God gave her quite a fine little figure I must say but after she accused me of taking advantage of her I was pretty much done. Perhaps another symptom of religion ? Not taking accountability for your own actions?